


Run Fast (you can't carry it with you if you want to survive)

by hishn_greywalker



Category: Generation Kill, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Military, Canon Typical Violence, Community: journeystory, Crossover, F/M, M/M, Wordcount: Over 10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:36:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hishn_greywalker/pseuds/hishn_greywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day Dean turns 18, he joins the Marines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run Fast (you can't carry it with you if you want to survive)

**Author's Note:**

> so you know how they say that it takes a village, well, sometimes, it does. this fic would not have been written without the enthusiasm and word wars of all of Chat: [](http://waterofthemoon.livejournal.com/profile)[**waterofthemoon**](http://waterofthemoon.livejournal.com/), [](http://clex-monkie89.livejournal.com/profile)[**clex_monkie89**](http://clex-monkie89.livejournal.com/), [](http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=trulyesoteric)[****](http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=trulyesoteric),[](http://dimeliora.livejournal.com/profile)[ **dimeliora**](http://dimeliora.livejournal.com/), [](http://monjinator.livejournal.com/profile)[**monjinator**](http://monjinator.livejournal.com/), [](http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=unavoidedcrises)[****](http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=unavoidedcrises)and[](http://road-rhythm.livejournal.com/profile)[ **road_rhythm**](http://road-rhythm.livejournal.com/). Especially [](http://clex-monkie89.livejournal.com/profile)[**clex_monkie89**](http://clex-monkie89.livejournal.com/), who poked and proded me and [](http://waterofthemoon.livejournal.com/profile)[**waterofthemoon**](http://waterofthemoon.livejournal.com/) who beta'd this. finished thanks to [](http://journeystory.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://journeystory.livejournal.com/)**journeystory** :)

They're living in Bumfuck, Indiana when Dean turns 17. By some small miracle, they're still living there in June when Dean graduates. When he thrusts the diploma into his father's hands, his dad grunts and reads it. "They're letting you graduate a year early?" he asks.

Dean tries not to look affronted by this because he knows his dad hates it when either he or Sammy flip him shit, or even appear to, but he really can't help it. His dad signed paperwork for this at five schools. This should not be a surprise.

Dean gets two extra miles to run that night and woken up at 4 am to do it again in the morning for his attitude.

Later that afternoon, Sammy slides down out the tree he's taken to hiding out in at this house and settles himself next to Dean on the back steps. "Did you apply to any colleges?"

Dean looks over, startled. He hadn't really even thought about college. Graduating early hadn't really been something he strived for. In eighth grade, at one of the four schools he went to that year, one of his English teachers realized he'd already read their course texts. She handed him a list of titles and asked him which ones he'd read. He'd read all but four of them. He found out later that it was a national list of books used by a good selection of schools for ninth through twelfth grade. He didn't come across a required text he hadn't read for nine schools, and then he'd read it that weekend on the twelve hour roundtrip drive that a hunt takes them on.

From there, he'd been waived out of PE, and all four years of English were pushed into independent study. He needed one more credit to graduate, in the end, but the shop teacher in Bumfuck, Indiana had gone to bat for him, said he'd done more than an extra credit worth of work in his after school shop work. The school hadn't been one hundred percent behind the idea, but they'd given in.

Now, though, Sammy is waiting expectantly for him to tell him about college. "Don't think I'm going to college, Sammy."

Sammy frowns at him but doesn't say anything. He brings his math homework to Dean to look over that night, something he hasn't done in years, but Dean does it anyways because he knows Sammy's just trying to make him feel better the only way he knows how.

Sammy's on track to graduate early, too. He hasn't had to have their father sign any paperwork yet, but it's only a matter of time. Sammy brings home brochures for some colleges sometime in November. He doesn't give them to Dean, though, and it only takes Dean a minute to get it.

Sammy's setting his sights on college.

Their dad finds the brochures in February. His silent fury at Dean is nearly visible in on the air for days. When he breaks, Dean lets his dad rail at him about abandoning the family and leaving them behind and how dumb and stupid can he be. He never outs them as Sammy's, never mentions the early graduation paperwork he signed for Sammy, forging his Dad's signature so Sammy didn't have to try and sneak it through their father.

Sammy watches from the doorway to their room. This is the third place they've lived since Dean graduated, and in this house, in a tiny town in Nevada, their room is directly off the living room. Dean flicks his fingers, out of sight of his dad, and Sammy backs away slowly and silently.

Later, Dean finds Sammy at the library, writing up the lab report for a lab two grades ahead of him. He settles in next to his brother, opening up his favorite anthology of early American Lit. It had been a gift from one of the teachers two schools before he graduated. The teacher, Mr. Ashcroft, noticed Dean flipping through the book every time he came to turn in his independent study work for English. When Dean came by to tell him he was leaving, the man pressed the book into his hands.

Dean's read it front to back, several times. He really enjoys Hawthorne.

Dean knows he'd enjoy college. He knows he likes learning, and he even liked when he had to stay up late and finish work because there was so much of it.

He also knows he can't go to college. Sammy's going to college, and if Dean goes, there will be college loans and debt and no way to make sure Sammy can go, too.

So Dean decides then and there that he's sending Sammy to college, no matter how hard he has to work to do it.

The day Dean turns 18, he joins the Marines.

 

Sammy graduates from high school a year early, just like Dean had. A year and a few months later, with Sammy, now Sam, safely tucked away at Stanford, 9/11 happens.

Dean spends half a year training after that, then a solid year in Afghanistan, and every bit of the six months after that training with his new unit, the Bravo 2. And then, in November, he gets leave. It's only three weeks, and he could stay in southern California, but Sam tells him to come up north. The open road and the Impala remind Dean of being a kid, of homework and hunts and his baby brother tucked in beside him. He might not live in the car anymore, but his whole life is in it, and all the important things happened there.

His dad handed the keys over two days after Dean graduated. When he thought it was Dean going to college, he hadn't demanded them back, and when Dean left for the Marines, he hadn't given his dad the chance to ask for them. He just hadn't said goodbye to his dad.

Staying with Sam on leave is full of trial and error. Sam's in his second year, settled into a MBA-in-five track, and living off campus with a guy named Zach Warren. Zach is a cool kid, three years older than Sam and getting ready to graduate with his BA in International Business. He's already gotten his acceptance letter to Stanford Law, though, so Dean doesn't worry about Sam having to find a new roommate the next year.

Zach is a good guy. He treats Dean with respect and a little bit of reverence that guys sometimes seem to feel when they find out Dean's been to war, that Dean's a munitions expert, that Dean can field strip a rifle one-handed and blindfolded.

Dean never tells them he could do that last bit before he joined up, that the only thing new is the automatic part of the equation. He's been using hunting rifles and shotguns nearly his whole life, and he'd taken to the M-4 with ease. Once they'd seen how well he dealt with the weapons, he'd been given a M-4 for everyday combat and an M-40 for special occasions, and he didn't tell anyone he had a civilian version of the M-40 locked in his trunk.

He had a few things from their old life in there, too. Holy water and salt and cats-eyes. A shotgun and a bunch of prepped salt rounds. Sam knows they're there, but he never asks. Dean sees Sam's cache under his bed his first night sleeping there.

Dean wakes up with nightmares. He's not safe, here in Sam's apartment. He sleeps with a non-service issue Smith and Wesson Sigma 9mm under his pillow and keeps two knives in close reach. When they go out, he's armed.

Once, when Dean is walking across campus with Sam, Zach, and Zach's little sister, a slight, blonde girl named Rebecca, some guy none of them knew got up in Dean's face. Dean doesn't know how the kid knew he was military, but he sauntered over and asked if he was active service. When Dean said yes, the guy started in on him about false wars and government cover-ups and conspiracies.

And it's not that Dean doesn't see what the kid is talking about. Dean doesn't really believe in the war. He believes in getting rid of the guys who killed all of those people in September of 2001. He believes in his country, in the fact that even if their war isn't really justified, that in the end, some good will come of it.

He believes in trying to make the world a better place, and he knows that it has to start somewhere. The girls he sees on the roadside in the middle east, the horror stories he's heard, the things people do to each other in the mountains in Afghanistan: these things tell him he might be doing some good.

He also gets that he could be doing good here, in the states. He could have joined a group that helps impoverished people in the states or a woman's advocacy group here or even the Peace Corps.

None of those things have combat pay, so none of those things would help pay for Sam's apartment like the Marines do.

Dean is pretty okay with his life choices. He doesn't like killing people, and he doesn't like not knowing if someone is a civilian or someone trying to kill him. He's not very impressed with the kid yelling at him, like this kid has any idea what Dean does, has done, will do.

But he is also pretty okay with this kid not knowing the realities of it, not understanding just how damn lucky he is to be able to stand there and yell at someone in the military and not be facing death because of it.

Dean saw a lot of things from his victor in the Middle East, and a lot more through the scope of his M-40.

Sam is less impressed with the kid yelling at Dean. He seems to know who he is, even if he doesn't actually know the guy, and is just getting ready to bite out a scathing reply to him when Rebecca steps up and lights in on the guy.

Zach is smiling at Rebecca. Sam is nodding along. Five or six kids have stopped walking to watch.

Rebecca tears the guy to pieces, and then, in a move that can only be described as flouncing, she turns around and softly links her arm through Dean's, making sure to broadcast the movement so Dean can pull away if he wants to.

Dean doesn't really know Rebecca, but the way she's handling this situation makes him think she knows more about the effects of war on people than most of the campus around them, Sam and Zach included. Rebecca is leading the three of them across the quad when another blonde girl nearly barrels into them.

She nods to Dean and flashes him a quick smile. "Thanks, for what you do," she tells him, and then her attention is on Rebecca.

Dean laughs at the look on Sam's face as this girl, Jess apparently, hugs Rebecca, careful not to dislodge her arm from his, and then tells her how awesome she was, telling that guy off.

Jess follows them to the café near Sam's next class and doesn't wait for an invite to sit with them and have lunch.

When Dean leaves a week later, he leaves the Impala with Sam, taking Sam's shitty '87 Honda Civic back to base. He knows they're deploying soon, and he knows it will be after Sam's classes start, so he wants the Impala with Sam now. He empties the trunk out, locks his things in the Honda's trunk, and goes back to base.

In January, they ship out to Kuwait.

 

Dean likes being in Bravo 2. They're a good, solid group of guys. Guys he can go to war with. Guys who will watch his back. Guys he will kill for, who will kill for him.

They get a new LT four weeks before they ship out. He's a college educated kid, someone who looks like he belongs at that lunch table with Sam, Zach, Rebecca, and Jess. He looks like someone who would be in classes with Sam at Stanford.

It figures that he went to Dartmouth.

Dean doesn't give him shit for having gone to a liberal college. He knows Sam can shoot straighter than some of the guys in his unit, that Sam could beat some of them with a knife, and that Sam does the same PT workout Dean does because Dean's workout hasn't really changed since he was in high school. The Marines made it a stricter routine, but no drill sergeant in the world can get Dean moving like his dad or the threat of something harming Sam could.

LT Fick seems to appreciate that Dean's testing is just testing, just a Marine trying to feel out his LT, not pushing it because of where he went to school. Sergeant Brad Colbert, aka the Iceman and what passes for a guiding influence in their platoon, seems to respect him as well. Maybe not get him, but respect him. Sergeant Tony Espera, aka Poke, served with LT Fick in Afghanistan and has nothing but good things to say about Fick. No one, Poke and Fick included, has good things to say about Afghanistan.

They end up sitting on their asses for far too long in Kuwait. They're low on everything; low on food and gun lube and baby wipes and batteries. They're low on time to jack off, they're low on time to call home, they're low on the mail list.

Dean gets regular letters from Sam and Rebecca. She sends him three photos while he's there. One of her. One of Sam. One Jess took of all of them.

Dean keeps the letters and the photos inside his flak jacket. They get a little messed up from the sweat, but he'd rather that then risk something happening to them outside of his vest.

One night, waiting for orders to move, Q-Tip, Person, and Christeson are swapping stories of girls they'd fucked or would like to fuck. Person has a few off ideas about how fucking a few of the girls should happen.

"But Sergeant Winchester here, he's got himself some pussy, even if she goes to some liberal dicksuck college," Person winds his story down with.

Dean isn't sure how he relates to anything Person just said, but he's sure he'll find out. He doesn't say anything, just raises an eyebrow at the three in front of him.

"Gonna show us that picture of your sure thing, Sergeant? Tell us how you managed to land a pretty thing like her?" Person asks, and it's probably the most respectful sentence Dean's ever heard out of Person's mouth.

So he does. He takes the picture of Rebecca out, the one where she's sitting under a tree on Stanford's campus and laughing at something someone has said. Her head is thrown back, and she's leaning back on her elbows, long legs stretched out. She's wearing shorts and a t-shirt that says "Vote!" with a ♀ below it. Dean knows it's a t-shirt about voting for women's rights and choice, but really, that shade of purple just looks fantastic on her.

Her hair is down in the picture, touching the grass behind her. Dean might have thought about her hair a few times while he's been over here.

Q-Tip whistles. "Damn, dawg, she's one fine looking piece of ass."

Dean rolls his eyes at him. "Her name's Rebecca."

Christeson actually looks interested in what he's saying, and Person's oddly quiet again, so Dean continues. "She's my brother's roommate's sister. We met when some kid was shitting on me being a Marine, just going at the war and the fucking government, right there on campus, and she just tore him down and sent him fucking running before I could say a damn thing."

The boys laugh, and Dean doesn't say more. Person finally makes a comment about what he'd have done to Rebecca to say thanks, and Q-Tip throws down something in challenge, and then Dean's getting up and leaving, shaking his head at them.

Marines don't do well with down time.

 

They're finally oscar mike, moving across the desert into a different country, fucking hostile invasion into a country already so torn up and in shambles Dean doesn't know what they're doing there. They spend the first two weeks getting progressively more fucked, a reporter taking down every thing that happens with meticulous notes.

Dean doesn't envy Colbert, Person, and Hasser, being stuck in a victor for hours on end with Trombley and Reporter. He doesn't know which would be worse, a reporter or someone who's as off his fucking rocker as Trombley.

Dean has to spend a lot more time with Lilley and his camera, but he figures if it gets to awful, he can hide the damn thing with Gunny Wynn. Gunny Wynn likes Dean, though Dean has no real idea why, but he'll take what he can get.

Sometimes, in the desert, Dean forgets himself, makes comments about some of the schools he went to, lets a few things slip here and there. Espera already knows that he graduated early, that he'd been through too many schools to keep track of. That had come out in Afghanistan, a long conversations about mascots and Dean not understanding them, understanding what they mean to most of the population.

Once, before digging his grave but after they've managed to scrape through another day, Dean asks the LT about his time in school. Asks what his brother is doing now, as spring semester is rolling to an end.

The LT tells him, a soft smile on his face. Colbert watches from a few paces away, unsmiling and cool as ever, but Dean knows he's listening, that he's filling away the information that the LT is giving away about himself, even as he comforts Dean.

Shit happens. Shit always fucking happens. Dean would tell Sam, if he was able to talk to Sam, that war fucking happened. But kids are dead, and they've turned people who need help away, and Dean can see the LT failing to figure out how to follow his commands and keep them all safe. He can see Colbert trying to do everything he can to support the LT and ease anything that might help.

The LT finds them gun lube. Then he lets them get commanded into an ambush that could have been avoided with recon.

Then they meet the demon.

 

Dean takes the guy out with a clean headshot from a berm 400 yards away. It's not a hard shot, and it wasn't a hard call to make. Through his scope, he'd watched the guy slice the throat of a kid. He'd choked down a yell, signaled for the LT, then watched as the blood drained from Fick's face as the guy sliced the throat of another kid, a girl this time.

Dean takes less than a minute to have his M-40 in place, his breathing slowed down, and the shot fired. The LT pats his shoulder, a job well done, and then, because Dean likes to keep an eye on the area he just took a shot from if he doesn't have to roust ASAP, Dean sees the man who he just shot in the head stand back up.

Dean makes a choked sound. He goes cold, his hands groping for the cross he wears with his dog tags, because you can make the hunter into a Marine, but he's always going to be a goddamn hunter. He keeps watching, sees the wound heal a little, but not all the way. Every one of his 5.56mm rounds has a cross etched in the back of it, something all of the other guys give him shit for, but old habits die hard.

The LT knows something's wrong the second Dean tenses, and he calls Colbert and Wynn up to the berm. Fick is holding a muted conversation with the other two, and after a moment, Colbert settles next to him. "You're sure it was a good shot?"

Dean doesn't nod, doesn't move his head at all. "Into the head right above the left ear," Dean paints for him, wanting to snap 'Sir' at the end. They're the same rank. Brad isn't Sir to him. But right now, Dean's a Marine being questioned by a superior.

"How is he upright, then?" Colbert asks, pulling out a pair of binoculars. He doesn't sound accusing, like he thinks Dean is lying. They both watch as the man makes a grab for one of the children who'd been too injured to make an escape.

"I don't think you want to know the answer to that," Dean tells him.

The LT is back at his other side. "Oh, no, I think we do," he tells Dean.

Dean sighs and pulls out a flask of holy water he'd brought with him from the states. Even if he got the worst shits in the world from whatever water he drinks here, there was no way he would drink this.

Before, it was just in case, a farfetched never be unprepared, notion. Now he's damn glad.

He unloads his gun, unchambers his next round, and then he dashes some of the water on the rounds. He'll have to make sure to dry everything off later, so no rust forms, but for now, the blessing is important.

He mutters a prayer under his breath, aware of the scrutiny he's getting. "I need someone to watch him. If he tries to move, shoot him with my weapon," he tells the LT, reloading the magazine and chambering a round. "But only if he moves. We'll give it all away if he gets hit with one of those rounds too early now."

The other three are staring at him like he might have lost it. He probably has.

Fucking demon in fucking Iraq.

Dean knows their shovels are mostly iron. He grabs his and starts in on a Devil's Trap, working as fast as he can. The rest of Bravo 2 is watching, but no one says anything. The trap is done in under two minutes. Just as Dean's finishing, he hears his rifle go off and he snaps his head up to look at Colbert.

"Guy was making a run for –" Colbert's breath stutters then. "Holy fuck, what did you do to these rounds, that guy is fucking steaming."

Dean glances back at the trap, hoping all the fucking hours his dad had made him put into drawing it over and over again will be enough. He'd drawn it from memory on the trunk of the Impala and the doorway of Sam's room, but he hadn't been rushed then, and neither had actually been tested.

But there's only one way to find out. "If he gets up, keep firing," Dean tells Colbert as he scrambles by him. The LT and Gunny are right on his six, both of them with their sidearms drawn. Dean doesn't bother.

Colbert only has to shoot the body once, when it twitches up. When they get to it, the body is writhing in pain with what looks like an acid burn spreading out from the wounds. "Should have known," the body croaks out. "There's always a Winchester in the least convenient spot."

Dean splashes a little bit more of his holy water at the demon. It lets out a high pitched shriek that shouldn't come from a man the size of the host. The LT and Gunny flinch back, but Dean gets a hold of the host and starts dragging him back towards the trap.

The LT recovers first, holstering his sidearm and helping. The 400 yards is the longest and shortest 400 yards Dean has ever experienced.

He stops, just outside of the Devil's Trap and looks at the other two. "We can't fuck this up. It needs to be in the center, and all the lines need to be unbroken."

The other two nod. "Solid copy," the LT tells him. Dean knows they don't understand why, but they're used to that. They get how important this is, and that's really all that matters.

The demon seems to recover slower than Dean remembers them doing so, but it still doesn't take too long.

"Winchester, Winchester," the demon taunts. "All alone, which means the other Winchesters are, too."

Dean doesn't rise to the bait. "Plenty of brothers right here with me," he tells it.

He was never very good at Latin. That was always Sam's forte. But he's got the basic exorcisms memorized. He starts chanting, low, but loud enough the demon gets it. The way the body contorts, skin rippling because the demon is in pain, the blood at the host's nose and eyes and mouth, it all looks familiar, feels familiar.

Dean hates it.

No one else in Bravo 2 says anything while Dean keeps reciting. Eventually there's a hiss and cry, and then there's black smoke rising up and away and it's gone, back to hell, maybe to escape again, but gone and someone else's business now.

The host is a tangled mess. Clearly, the headshots weren't the first damage the body took. Dean sighs, steps forward and shuts the blank, unseeing eyes, and then scuffs up the Devil's Trap.

No need for anyone to make a fuss about a bunch of Marines being devil's worshippers, though wouldn't that be hilarious, given the situation.

 

The reporter never approaches Dean about the whole ordeal. The LT finds him the next day and tells him the reporter has been apprised of the situation, that he doesn't have to worry. Dean hadn't worried, mostly because he knows that Rolling Stone would never print a whiff of anything like what happened, because no one would believe it. Wright won't even try to write it up. He likes his job, being embedded with the Marines in a war zone aside, Dean knows.

Most of the guys give him a wide berth. Espera slaps him on the back that night, his touch letting him know he still cares, that he's not afraid, even though he should be. Person sits down beside him and starts mouthing off, like usual. Except, no, this is Ray beside him. This isn't Person, the annoying RTO of Bravo 2-1, this is Ray, Brad's best friend, someone who thinks of Dean as a friend.

The guys in the unit have long come to understand that for some people, friendship is just a little out of reach. When he'd been at Paris Island, a lot of everything Dean did had been brushed off with a muttered "second generation." He'd never responded to the mutters, but when one of his officers flat out said something about being second generation to him, Dean shook his head. "Third generation, sir. My father's father was a Marine as well."

He'd seen a few looks thrown his way for the next few days. People wondering why he was there, in basic, enlisted, and not in school on an officer track. He could see them looking for all the ways he screamed 'raised by a Marine.' A few of the guys in basic hadn't understood when someone brushed off his idiosyncrasies with a "dude, don't worry, he's third generation, and his dad was a 'Nam Marine." They'd been quietly pulled aside, been given the run down, and come back looking at him out of the corner of their eyes.

Somehow, this demon has managed to do what years and war have not. This demon has gotten Dean to look over and see Ray sitting beside him, not Person.

When Ray stops talking mid sentence, Dean looks up. Brad is standing two feet away, the LT at his side. Ray nods to them, stands up and pats Dean on the shoulder. He doesn't say anything as he walks away.

Brad sits on one side of him and the LT on the other. They're quiet for a while, Dean messing with the sand between his feet. Neither of them push him. Finally, Dean sighs and sits up straighter. "My dad was raised by a Marine. He joined up and fought in 'Nam and came home to a country that didn't understand, didn't want to understand. When I was four and my little brother was six months old, there was a fire. It killed my mom. And… the thing was, it wasn't an electrical fire. Something like that," Dean nodded back the direction they'd come from, where they'd left the host body, "Something similar, but a hell of a lot more powerful, killed her."

Neither Brad nor the LT say anything. Dean has never really had to explain it all to someone. Not this part, at least. He's had to give the 'yeah, ghosts are real' speech a few times, and the 'you should really stay out of those woods' speech another few times, but Dean's never had to tell anyone about demons before.

"Demons are real," he tells them, after a moment of silence. "Not what the Bible says, really. I mean, I sent that one back to hell, but hell is just what we call it because that's the best fitting definition. The Bible, the Qur'an, the Tanakh, whatever. It's all just man's way of trying to put names to things that are more powerful than us. It doesn't matter which version you believe; none of them are right, and they're all right."

Dean doesn't really know what else to say. He's sitting between a Jew and Catholic, and he's just told them both of their religions are sort of right but mostly wrong and that demons are fucking real.

"Mostly, it's about belief. If you wanted to fight a demon, LT, you'd use shit from the Bible, in Latin or Ancient Greek, if you could. If you did, Brad, you'd use most of the same stuff, just in Hebrew. I've used them all, because I was raised believing demons are real and religion is just the band-aid."

Dean sighs and rolls his shoulders, trying to lose the tension in them. "My family fell off the grid when I was four. It's sorta become the family business: saving people, hunting things. But my little brother wanted to go to college, and my dad is an asshole Marine who believes the mission had to come first." Dean glances from side to side, but both Brad and the LT are looking forward, just listening. "So I joined the Marines. Combat pay goes a long way towards college tuition and housing."

The LT nods at that because he knows the kind of money Dean is talking in regards to school. Dean shrugs then. "So, that's basically it. Demons are real. Ghosts are real. Everything else you think about going bump in the night is real, and you should most definitely be afraid of the fucking dark."

Brad shifts, stretching his left leg out and staring down at his boot. "Have you seen anything else here, in the desert?"

Dean shakes his head. "Negative."

The LT cuts a glance across him, to Brad. "Do you still… hunt things? I guess? When we're home?"

Dean shakes his head. "Not unless we stumble across it, like this demon. Sam's content in Stanford, and I want to spend my libo relaxing, not trying to die in new, creative ways, Sir."

The LT smiles slightly. "I guess the old, uncreative ways of war are enough for any man."

Dean shrugs. On his other side, Brad shifts. "So religion isn't real?"

Dean shrugs. "I don't know. But I've seen things that I can't explain, and I've seen things the Bible tries to explain, and I can't make any of it fit any single religion. It just is."

Brad nods slowly. The LT stands up then, and Dean looks up at him. "Thanks for the intel, Dean. If you see anything else, I want to know."

Dean nods and stands, Brad following them up. When the LT walks off, Brad is following him. Dean doesn't, just stands and watches them go.

 

No one treats Dean any differently. Once or twice they look at him after a particularly gruesome display on the field, but he shakes his head and watches as they relax. Common human horrors, these Marines are good with—demons and creatures of the night, they don't want to deal with.

By the time they get to Baghdad and receive their orders home, most of Bravo 2 acts like it never happened. Dean catches the LT watching him every now and then, but he doesn't say anything to him, so Dean ignores it.

When they land on US soil, Dean takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He can feel the rest of his unit inhaling, too, like the air is different in the US. And it sort of is, Dean thinks. When they get to Pendleton and step out into sunny California air, it smells different. It smells like home. Dean hasn't ever had that feeling before. Home has never been a place, just Sam.

Sam, who is waiting with the rest of the families when they get off of the bus. Sam and Rebecca and Zach and Jess are all waiting for him.

Dean watches as Poke kneels down and lets his daughters jump him, his wife standing beside them, her hands shaking as she touches him. He watches Walt's mother tug him and Ray to her, holding them at the same time, and neither of the boys are struggling against it.

Brad's family is there, his mother wrapping Nate in a hug and his sister holding onto Brad like he might disappear if she doesn't.

When he steps up to them, Sam hugs him first. It's longer than usual, but Sam doesn't seem overly tense. When he pulls away, Rebecca is sliding into his place and pulling Dean tight against her. Dean dips his head and takes in the scent of clean-warm-honey-roses-summer and can't help but sag a little. He knows he's filthy, covered in dirt and dust and sand and his own filth. His feet are disgusting, and there are places his skin looks like scales with sores.

But he's home and Rebecca is hugging him and, at the end of this, there is a shower and a clean bed.

 

When they get back to the apartment Dean lived in, which has been closed up and vacant for months, Dean expects a layer of dust that might be coming alive and an empty fridge. Instead, his house is clean, the sheets are freshly washed, and the fridge is full. Rebecca smiles at him, and Sam just shakes his head.

"We'll be back in a few hours, okay?" Sam tells him, gently herding the other three out of the apartment.

Dean is grateful. He wouldn't have asked them to leave, but Sam can remember him after his last tour, when he spent an entire hot water tank's worth of water in a shower and then came out and had to scrub his feet more, and put Neosporin on and wrap up a wound in his leg.

He's not wounded this time, thankfully, but it doesn't change his shower. By the time they get back, Dean is dressed in jeans and an old PT t-shirt. He's barefoot, which he plans to be for as long as possible, and he's in the kitchen putting together a meal.

Jess and Rebecca make a protesting sound, but Dean waves them over to sit at the kitchen bar. Zach settles against the wall by the fridge, and Sam hops up onto the counter by Dean.

"I am so looking forward to a meal that hasn't been prepackaged since 1996," Dean tells them.

Sam laughs, because it's not the worst thing he and Dean have eaten. Jess and Rebecca exchange a look. Zach snorts. "The food is that bad?"

Dean shrugs. "It could have been worse, but man, it got old. After three weeks in a… in a humvee with the same guys, eating the same damn food, from stupid foil packages… yeah, it's that bad."

Sam cocks an eyebrow, and Dean shrugs back at him. Sam rolls his eyes. The other three look between the two, and Dean hides a smirk as they try to follow a conversation that they'll never be able to.

Sam finally nods once, and Dean turns back to the stove. He's not making anything complicated—noodles with sauce and ground hamburger. Given that it's not precooked, proportioned, basically prechewed food, he's okay with it.

When they sit down to eat at the table made for four, Dean laughs as he watches them all elbow each other and grin as they knock into one another reaching for their glasses. It's friendly and close and exactly the opposite of being stuck too close together to the rest of his team in their victor. This is close in another way, and even if it's more awkward in some ways, it's a lot less awkward in others.

They move into the living room, and Dean flips on the TV. He doesn't know any of the shows—all of the ones he's known before, the few they were, don't seem to be on any more, and he's not even sure the news anchor he flips past is the same one as before he'd shipped out. Eventually, he settles on one of the original Superman movies—all of them have seen it, and Dean won't stand out as having missed anything watching this.

Rebecca is sitting beside him. She starts out with a bit of distance between them, but at some point, Dean ends up leaning into the corner of the couch, and she ends up leaning on him, breathing steadily as she sleeps. Dean looks down at her, unsure of how this happened. He's only met Rebecca the one time in person. He's e-mailed her some, and he wrote her letters as often as he could, even if eleven of them in the middle were all mailed together once they got to Baghdad.

But he doesn't really know her. She doesn't seem put off by the fact that they haven't really known each other long. He's known her brother for years now, and she seems to have known Sam for years, so maybe, just maybe, all of the stories he's been told about her, and the stories he's sure she's been told about him, add up to knowing each other a little bit more than not at all.

Eventually, they all get up to go to bed. Jess and Rebecca crash out on the couch, which pulls out into a bed that Dean knows is pretty much the most uncomfortable bed in the world, but it's something. Sam and Zack get zero degree bags on the floor, and even with the air conditioning puttering away as hard as it can, they'll probably still be too warm.

Dean wakes up twice that night. The first time, he sits up groping for his rifle, unsure why his weapon isn't next to him in his grave. Then the car down the street misfires again, and he slumps back into the bed, aware he's in Oceanside and not in Iraq.

The second time, he wakes up with a scream in his throat. He had been tussed up by pixies with Sam hanging just out of reach, the evil little creatures twirling and dancing below them, their teeth on display.

Dean's pretty sure he's not the only one in his unit whose PTSD is going to include things that go bump in the dark, but he doesn't think the rest of them will dream about being 15 and caught by pixies when all he'd been trying to do was build a treehouse with Sam.

They'd had really shitty luck that year.

In the morning, Dean wakes up before any of the others. He slips on a pair of shorts, his oldest, most worn PT shirt, and his go-fasters. He's just to the door when the bathroom door opens and Rebecca comes out. She's dressed in the slinkiest pair of running shorts Dean has seen and a tight tank top, her own running shoes on her feet.

She pads over to him, nearly silent. "Can I run with you, at least as far as I can keep up?"

Dean would have said no if she had phrased it any other way. But she clearly knows he's going to out pace her and out distance her, and she doesn't seem too put out by this. So he just shrugs. "Sure."

It's just breaking dawn when they hit the third mile. He slows down a second, then points to the street they're coming up on. "If you go down that street straight for a mile before you turn to head back, I'll catch you in a bit."

Rebecca nods. She's breathing hard, and Dean is pleased when she doesn't waste her breath trying to respond.

She turns where he'd pointed out, and four miles later, just half a mile from his place, he catches up to her. She's only gone a mile and a half. Despite the fact that her pace must have been slower without him, she speeds up to run the last bit in with him at his pace.

When they get back to his place, Sam is up and sitting on the porch. He raises an eyebrow at Dean when they come up the walk, but Dean just shakes his head. He'll get another run in with Sam later, and he won't let Sam off like he did Rebecca.

For a civilian without any of the training that Dean or Sam have, she did a pretty impressive job. In the back of his head, Dean's picked her running apart, and he knows that if she keeps running with him, that in time, she might even be able to keep up with him for this run.

Dean lets Rebecca shower first. He's only had one real, long shower since he got stateside, and he knows the second he gets into the shower, he's not stepping out of this one until the water is cold. While she's in the bathroom, Dean pops in some toast and downs a protein shake. He hates the things, but he's dropped more weight than ever this tour.

In Afghanistan, he'd never been out of a secure base for long. He'd spent a lot of time in the field, but they'd been deployed as Recon Marines then, and been given recon missions. Which had entailed returning to base when they were over.

In Iraq, they'd been shock troops, outside of any safety net and wide open to attack. It hadn't done much for his appetite, and being limited to two MREs a day hadn't helped much, either.

The four of them stay at Dean's for another three days. Each day, Rebecca gets up and runs with Dean in the morning. She'd winced a little when Dean and Sam had come back from their run that first night. "I see Sam's been holding back when he runs with me," she told Dean, shaking her head in self depreciation.

Dean had shrugged. "Maybe, but he probably doesn't push himself as hard as I push him," he'd told her.

She'd smiled at him for that, and something inside of Dean had loosened a little.

The four of them return to Stanford in Sam's shitty Honda, leaving the Impala to Dean. A few days after they left, Dean finds himself in Brad Colbert's driveway, tucked under the hood of the Impala while Brad strips something down in the engine of his bike.

They've done this before, the two of them working on their babies, cleaning and checking and loving their vehicles with every bit they couldn't give their humvees overseas. At some point in the afternoon, Garza and Person show up. Garza ends up helping Dean out, while Person sits on the grass and talk to them.

Dean isn't sure how Person got onto the topic of college, but he has. "So, I was thinking about Stanford. And your brother goes there, right, Winchester?" Ray asks, but doesn't stop for Dean to answer. "Yeah, so, I was wondering if you thought maybe he'd give me the low down, let me know if it's a place I'd fit in."

And all three of them know what Ray means. He wants to know if he'll have to fight every step of the way through school with his peers hating him, with people giving him shit. It's not something that happens often, but it happens, and Persons' right to find out how much flak will be coming his way before he gets into it.

Situational awareness is important.

It's well past dinner by the time any of them start making motions to pack it up. Dean's wiping down tools and checking his work over when Brad's phone rings. Dean knows the look on Brad's face, soft and sure and at the same time, a little hesitant.

He's not surprised when Brad answers with, "Hey, LT."

Ray whoops from where he'd gone from sitting on the grass to lying on the grass, and Garza nods. Dean's lips twitch in a slight smile that he knows Brad reads. They're all friendly, and all of them are most definitely not asking.

After a quiet conversation, which even Ray seems to be tuning out, Brad flips his phone shut. "LT's on his way over with meat for the grill. You got anything specific you want, the Ralph's is six blocks that way." He nods in the right direction.

None of them have been stateside long enough to be picky. Sure, on their last flight out, they'd spent at least two hours swapping meals that they would die to have show up in front of them, but they're still stuck in 'not from a all in one package' and 'doesn't taste like soggy cardboard' mode. The LT could bring over the worst cuts of meat he could find, and none of them would complain.

Hasser wanders in just before the LT. Ray is up and glued to his side before he's barely in the door, and Dean hides a smile. He really hadn't seen that pair's friendship coming, but it seems to work in favor of both of them. Ray seems to settle when Walt's around, and Dean was there when Ray drew Walt out of himself when they were headed into Baghdad.

The LT doesn't looks surprised at all by the gathering. He nods to all of them, where they've sacked out in Colbert's living room. He doesn't say anything, though, and none of them get up to follow him into the kitchen.

"Hey."

Dean lolls his head to the side and looks over at Garza, who shrugs. Both Brad and the LT know they can hear them. Dean nods in return.

"You good?" Brad asks, and Dean hasn't ever heard that tone of voice before.

Brad had gone to Iraq with just a picture of his bike. He'd gotten one letter a week from his mother, though sometimes they'd come six at a time, and he'd written two back. Brad was extremely good at putting distance between himself and everything else.

The distance wasn't there in his voice anymore.

"Yeah, I'm good," the LT responded. Dean could hear the warmth in his voice, too.

"You know where the grill is." There wasn't any talking after that, but Dean could hear them shuffle around a little before the door to the back opened and shut.

Brad sticks his head into the living room. "You fuckers should grab a beer and come out here."

Dean grumbles as he gets up, but he does. Garza gets up with him. Walt and Ray, who are puppy piled on the couch, don't seem inclined to move, so Dean leaves them there.

Dinner is nice. It's quiet and steady, all of them in the same place mentally. When car doors slam at the house that backs up to Brad's, all of them tense. Dean isn't the only one who crouches down. When a dog starts barking at something in a not-so-friendly way, Dean and Gabe exchange looks when they tense.

But here, with these guys, it's not strange. Here, they can nod at each other because they're all doing it, and here they don't need to worry about someone reacting wrong to them.

Later that week, he calls Sam and tells him about the demon. Sam is silent while he talks, letting him explain everything before he responds.

"You fucker," Sam finally tells him. "You weren't supposed to hunt in Iraq."

Dean smiles at the phone. "Yeah, well, circumstances," he tells his brother.

He can see Sam nodding knowingly in his mind. "I had to explain to the LT and Brad. No one else seemed to want to know anything, but I'll tell them if they ask."

Sam is quiet for a moment. Finally, he sighs. It sounds resigned, but Dean knows better. He doesn't care about them knowing; he just doesn't want anyone else to have to live the life they lived. "Probably for the best that they understand."

They talk about Sam's new job at a bookstore just off campus, one Sam got despite Dean telling him he didn't need to. They hadn't fought over the issue, but Dean really didn't like the idea of Sam juggling work and school.

Rebecca called every other day. Dean texted her in between, but never called her. She didn't seem put out by it. Dean didn't know why she was so understanding, but he was glad for it.

When the LT's paddle party rolls around, they've been home a few months. Most of Dean's ticks have settled down, and he only wakes up in a sweat every other night. He'd gone four straight days without it, one good week in the middle of August, but then it was followed by five straight nights of nightmares.

He doesn't hunt anything. Sam calls him once to tell him that he'd sent some information on a ghost haunting a town near him in Southern California to Bobby, and that a hunter or two might be coming through. Dean keeps his eye out for any hunter activity, but whoever comes through is good at their job and stays out of the local media.

Dean feels brittle at the LT's party. He can tell Brad isn't feeling it, either, and that Mike Wynn, whose house they're at, seems to have caught their mood.

The rest of the guys don't seem to have a problem with getting shitfaced and sharing stories about the LT. Or about things that happened while he was their LT. He's a Captain now, their Captain for another week, but no one calls him Captain unless there's another officer around.

He's the LT. That's just how it is. He's always going to be the LT.

Dean leans back against the porch railing late in the night, getting away from all the noise. Brad follows him not too long after, and nods as he settles down a foot or two away.

They stand in companionable silence for a while. The noise from the house is comforting, even as much as Dean feels off that night. He's had a lot of COs over the last few years, but he thinks maybe Fick is his favorite. He knows he trusts him more than any of the others, and he knows he's actually sad to see him go, even if he also thinks that maybe Fick would be ruined if he stayed.

Not that he'd ever tell Fick that.

After a while, Brad sighs. "I don't know what I'm going to do when he leaves for Harvard," Brad tells him.

Fick leaves in three weeks. Dean isn't sure how he's going to wrap his head around going from a Marine Corps Captain to a college kid again, but he figures if anyone can do it, Fick can. He might slip him Sammy's number, because Sam actually knows what it feels like to show up to class and deal with having lived a life no one around him understands.

"Continue on," Dean tells Brad, if a bit delayed. Brad doesn't seem to notice.

"Yeah." Brad shifts, glancing at Dean, then back out into the yard. "I got offered a place in an exchange with the Royal Marines. I think… I think I might take it."

Dean isn't sure how he somehow ended up as the Iceman's confidante. "You should," he tells him, even if his opinion really shouldn't matter. Dean and Brad both served in Iraq at the same rank, even if Brad's been promoted since then. They've always been, if not friendly, at least content to hang around near each other in mostly silence. They've never been big on sharing.

Then again, Brad knows Dean's biggest and deepest secret now. Brad has been fully indoctrinated into that which formed Dean Winchester, and he's stuck around. Maybe they are friends.

Dean clears his throat. "I mean, it's not that much farther, England to Cambridge, than it is Oceanside to Cambridge, is it?"

Brad shrugs. "Like 300 miles or something."

Dean snorts. "You totally looked that up, didn't you?"

Brad glances over at him, but there's a tilt to his mouth that says, yeah, he most definitely had.

Dean looks over his shoulder, then back at Brad. "You got it bad, dude."

Brad doesn't blush, but he does look startled, just a little. He opens his mouth like he's going to say something, then shuts it, and looks away.

Dean sighs. "It's cool, dude."

They sit in silence for a long time after that. When Dean finally gets up to go back inside, Brad reaches out and touches his ankle, just a swift touch to get his attention. Dean pauses and looks down.

"I do," Brad tells him. At Dean's raised eyebrow, he shrugs. "Have it bad."

Dean grins at him. "Yeah. Good thing he does, too."

He wanders back into the party, but the surprised, happy look on Brad's face stays with him for the rest of the night.

 

The rest of the year goes surprisingly smoothly for Dean. He spends all of his leave in Stanford, with his brother and his brother's friends, who somehow, without Dean's notice, have become his friends.

There's Zach, and Rebecca, and of course, there's Jess. There's a guy named Troy who parties more than Dean thinks he should, but who's always looking out for Sam, not letting him work too hard. There's two kids, best friends since forever, named Jade and Parker who are a year younger than Sam but somehow integrate with absolutely zero issues. Jade is working on a degree in military history, and though her focus is a thousand or so years in the past, she still e-mails him several times a week for his opinion on things.

Ray does, in fact, get out of the Marines. He does, in fact, apply to Stanford. And believe it or not, he even gets in.

Sam and Ray become friends way faster than Dean is actually comfortable with.

Somehow, in all of that, Rebecca becomes Dean's girlfriend. She comes down to see him on breaks, and she skips going home to St. Louis the first Christmas that Dean is back from Iraq, and instead comes down to Oceanside with Sam and Jess on the 21st.

It's a full house. Dean's place doesn't have a guest room, so Sam and Jess sleep on the pullout. Rebecca raises an eyebrow the first night they're there, and Dean knows that she won't say anything if he sleeps on the floor.

Instead, he climbs into bed after her, making sure he's between her and the door. Even if he's a little unsure about the idea of sharing a bed with someone, there's a part of him that says he has to protect her, make sure that nothing can get her.

When Dean wakes up in the morning, he's curled around her, and he hadn't dreamed. He smiles to himself, leaning into her a little more, and closes his eyes again. All he can smell is her, clean and girly, like flowers and soap and just a hint of perfume. He can hear the silence in his apartment that tells him Sam and Jess are still sleeping and feels safe. He doesn't feel safe, usually, not even when he is. Usually, even if he knows he is safe, he can't know for sure that Sam is safe, or that, it seems, that Rebecca is safe.

It's a nice feeling.

Christmas goes smoothly. Jess and Sam head back to Stanford before New Year's. Troy and Ray are apparently throwing a party, and as much as Dean knows it will be hilarious to see, he really doesn't want to deal with however many drunk college students that party will mean.

Instead, he takes a couple of the guys up on a quiet night out at one of the local bars. Three hours before he and Rebecca are going to head out, his phone rings.

"Winchester," he answers, not recognizing the number.

"It's Brad."

"Hey, dude. How's England?" Dean asks, curious, but a little distracted by Rebecca, who's digging through her suitcase for something.

"It was wet. And dreary. And they really do have ridiculously bad teeth. But I will tell you all of this tonight, if you tell me when and where you're meeting the guys," Brad tells him.

That grabs Dean's attention. "You're in town?"

"Both me and Nate are, yes." Brad pauses, like he's trying to decide how much to tell Dean. Dean gets it, and he doesn't push him. "I didn't have the chance to come home for Hanukkah, but they gave me time off for Christmas. Nate invited me to his family's, so I'm dragging him out here to see mine for the last of my leave."

Dean snorts. "I'm surprised you didn't drag him back to Cambridge, where you'd get him all to yourself. You're gonna have to share him once the guys find out he's in town."

Brad makes a noise that Dean knows is half annoyance and half agreement. "We're only in Oceanside for the night, then we'll be in San Diego proper for the next four days. The guys can hunt us down and face the wrath of my mother if they feel like it."

Dean laughs. "Fair enough." He tells him where they're going. "So we'll see you in a few hours."

Brad doesn't bother to say goodbye before he hangs up, and Dean laughs. Rebecca's watching him from the doorway. "Who was that?"

"Brad Colbert. He was in my platoon in Iraq. He's stationed as a liaison in England now, though." He pauses there, not sure how much to tell her. After a moment, though, he sighs. "And, though this part is a secret, he's totally boning my old LT."

Rebecca snorts out a laugh at his word choice. "Oh, yeah?"

Dean nods. "Yeah. And, really, I think I'm the only one who isn't their families who knows officially. So, nothing around the guys, okay?"

She nods and crosses over to where he's sitting on the couch. "Of course not," she tells him, settling down beside him. He'd never really been much for touching anyone, but in the last ten days, Rebecca has sort of made it her mission to cuddle up to him as much as possible. And, really, he can't say he minds.

Later that night, Dean leads Rebecca into a bar not far from his apartment. In the back corner, he can see the guys they're meeting, rowdy and loud enough to have a bit of space around them clear, but laughing and loose in a way that makes even complete strangers smile when they see them.

"Winchester!" Garza calls when he catches sight of him. Hasser is sitting beside him, and Christeson and Stafford are shoved into the middle of the circular booth, with Chaffin and Lilly boxing them in. Doc and Manimal are sitting across from Hasser and Garza and are watching the four in the middle with amusement.

Hasser scoots in, shoving Garza into Lilly, who makes Stafford scoot over, basically into Christeson's lap. Everyone is laughing when Dean sits down. Rebecca manages to perch on the edge of the booth, with Dean basically holding her in with an arm wrapped around her waist.

They've been there long enough to put a dent in their first round when Brad and Nate show up. The rest of the guys look like someone just proved to them Santa was real, or promised them a lifetime supply of batteries for the NVGs. Brad and Nate shake hands and accept hugs, though Brad is clearly unsure as to why he's getting hugs, and eventually they drag some chairs over and sit at the open side of the booth.

It's probably the best New Year's Eve Dean has ever had. Last year, he was shipping out in just a few days, and he'd been in Afghanistan the year before that. He doesn't really want to go further back; he's pretty sure they just get more depressing.

But this year he's at a bar with guys he knows and trusts, a guy who might just be his best friend, who knows his secrets and whose secrets he knows. He's got a girlfriend, which is something so completely new he doesn't know if he's processed it. Around 2330, Sam calls him, clearly drunk, but also having a good time.

When Dean hears Ray in the background, he puts his phone on speaker and tells Sam to put Ray on.

They spend the next five minutes listening to Ray get as creative as he knows how as he insults Brad for not telling him he was in the country. By the time the phone call ends, everyone at the table is cracking up.

Midnight comes and goes. Everyone hollers at Dean and Rebecca, but she can barely kiss him, she's laughing so hard at Stafford's commentary. Dean's not sure Q-Tip actually was trying to be that funny, but that makes Dean laugh, which just sets Rebecca off again.

Eventually, everyone starts to leave. Dean and Rebecca are walking back to his place. Nate and Brad leave the bar right behind them. When Dean is sure none of the other guys are within earshot, he raises an eyebrow at Brad. "You guys wanna come back for another beer?"

Brad and Nate exchange a look. Dean's seen Poke and his wife, Gina, hold whole conversations like that. Jess and Sam seem to be getting there. Nate and Brad are just as good as Poke and Gina, though, and Nate nods after a moment. "Sure."

The four of them are fairly quiet on the walk back, but it's comfortable. At some point, Rebecca slides her hand into Dean's, and Dean feels a small pang for the couple beside them, who can't do this, if they even wanted to.

Dean wonders—to himself, because unless he's a hell of a lot more drunk than he is, he'll never voice these thoughts to either Brad or Nate—if they do things like hold hands when they're in Boston, where no one knows them. He wonders if they go out and touch casually and act like a couple, like a kid going to Kennedy School of Government and his boyfriend, who works in England.

Before Dean can get any further along in his thoughts, they're back at his place. He lets everyone in and grabs them all beers. Rebecca had sat in the big, comfy armchair, and once he gives Brad and Nate their beers, she stands to let him sit before sitting down on his lap.

They talk about nothing, for a while. Nate tells stories of school, which Rebecca counters. Dean and Brad discuss training and the differences between Recon and Marine Commandos. Finally, around four in the morning, Rebecca bows out.

"It was nice to meet you," she tells Brad and Nate, kissing them both on the cheek. Both of them look fairly stunned but manage to mumble a reply.

Dean laughs at them. Nate leans back with a raised eyebrow. "How did you land her, again?"

Dean rolls his eyes. "She decided my virtue needed defending from some anti-war type up at Stanford."

Brad snorts, having heard the story before, but Nate motions him to continue. "Her brother is my brother's roommate, and she apparently took offense to the idea that someone would think I was doing horrible things to people in Afghanistan."

"She knows you're a Marine, right?" Nate asks.

Dean gets what he means. "Yeah, she knows I've killed. But I haven't shot anyone outside of an active war zone, so." Dean shrugs.

Nate nods, then yawns, trying to cover it with his hand. Brad smirks at him, but it's soft and teasing. Dean likes that look on Brad Colbert. He looks a lot less like the world has just taken a dump on him.

"All right, time to go," Brad says, urging Nate up.

Dean walks them to the door. "Breakfast at the diner on the Highway and Mission?"

Brad nods. Nate yawns again and leans into Brad for a moment, before he straightens up and flashes Dean a smile. "Why don't we make it breakfast for lunch, and meet at like, 1300."

Dean laughs. "Done. See you then."

He stands at the open door until Brad and Nate disappear down the street, then heads to bed, where Rebecca is curled up on the side furthest from the door.

It has definitely been the best New Year's yet.

 

The next morning, Dean doesn't wake up until almost 1130. He hasn't slept in that late since just after he got back from deployment, and then, that was more the sleep of dead. Sleeping for sixteen hours straight because you haven't seen a mattress in six months is not the same as sleeping off New Year's Eve.

Rebecca is 100% for going to the diner and letting someone else make them food. The place is packed when they get there, a bit early, but by the time Nate and Brad show up, they only have to wait a few minutes for their table.

Breakfast/lunch is quiet, but again, it's not uncomfortable. Dean has always had this with Sam, and he and Rebecca slowly figured it out over the last couple of days, but this is the first time he hasn't felt awkward like this with anyone else.

Brad and Nate are leaving straight from the diner, so they hang out for a little once their food is cleared. Nate is in the middle of telling a story about their plane ride from Baltimore when Brad's phone rings. The look he gives it tells Dean all he needs to know, and he cracks up. "Tell Ray hello for us," Dean tells him.

Brad rolls his eyes, but answers the phone. Nate and Dean pay more attention than Brad would probably like, and Rebecca watches the proceedings with good humor. She's been dealing with Ray for the last 6 months, so she understands.

When Brad has finally convinced Ray that driving down is a bad idea, and that he'll see him when he's back on leave in 6 months or so, Brad flips the phone shut and gives it a disgruntled look. Nate grins and elbows him.

Eventually, they leave. The wait staff have been more than understanding about their lingering at their table, so they make sure to tip well. Rebecca and Dean wander back towards his place, hand in hand. She grins up at him at one point. "Your friends are fun."

Dean laughs. "Yeah, they're a pretty good group of guys."

She nods, turning serious. "Is it hard, not being a unit with them anymore?"

Dean shrugs. He's thought about it before, but there is really nothing to be said about it. "I… there's no unit that was the best. This one, the one that I was with in Iraq, they were pretty awesome. But command was pretty fucked. Each unit has its ups and downs, I guess."

Rebecca nods, like she gets it. And she might on the surface. He supposes everyone gets it on some level. But she doesn't really understand, because any situation she has been equating it to hasn't been life or death, not like it has been for Dean. He might not like all the guys in his unit, but he trusts them with his life.

Rebecca goes back to school, but Dean talks to her a lot. He ships out, back to Iraq, in April. When Cpt Morrel gets killed, all Dean can think is thank god that wasn't Nate. He emails Brad about it after a week, unsure what he's actually saying. But all he knows is that no matter how hard it was to lose Morrel, the relief that Nate had gotten out, that it hadn't been him, was so much greater.

Dean doesn't know if it's because it's Nate, or if it's because of what Nate means to Brad.

Brad emails him back, just telling him I'm really glad it wasn't Nate, too. He doesn't tell Dean if he's a horrible person for feeling that way, doesn't tell him he should feel just as bad about Morrel as he would have if it had been Nate.

Dean's 6 months in Iraq turn into 14, two weeks here and 8 weeks there. A guy in his unit, Ryan Johns, has a daughter that's over a year old when they get back. She's walking and talking when they get back to Oceanside, and Dean can't help the little bit of him that feels like Johns might have lost out on more important things than any of them will know. Rebecca, Sam, and Jess are there to greet him. Dean nearly gapes at Sammy, who's gained another two inches and towers over Dean now.

Jess and Rebecca laugh at him when he pulls Sam down into a hug, and something inside of Dean unclenches at the sound.

Rebecca goes back to the hotel with Sam and Jess that first night. Dean frowns at her, but he's out for over 22 hours once he lies down, and the soft look that Rebecca gives him when they all show up once he's awake makes Dean feel a little bit better about it.

The three of them are out of school for the summer by the time Dean is back, so the three of them hang out in Oceanside for a little while. Sam and Jess have to return to Stanford sooner rather than later, both of them working summer jobs, but Rebecca stays with Dean until August.

In July, Dean signs up for more jump training and is gone for three weeks. Rebecca stays at his place in Oceanside, and Dean isn't sure what to do with the feeling he gets when he gets back from South Carolina, coming home after that much time away to find Rebecca lying on the couch reading a text for one of her fall classes. She smiles at him, waving the hand not holding the book up, but doesn't stop until she finishes the chapter.

Dean does a few short deployments after that, running operations that he can't talk about and that, probably, if push came to shove, don't exist. Brad comes home, back to Oceanside for a few months. He and Dean start running together in the mornings, jogging along the ocean in early morning fog, silent except their footfalls. Dean's the first person Brad goes to about his potential transfer.

"I got offered a post at Jacksonville," Brad tells him.

Dean raises an eyebrow. Nate's still in Boston, but Jacksonville is a lot closer than Oceanside.

"They told me that it's only for two years. After that, I'd probably move to Quantico."

Dean starts to smile. In two years, it's hard to believe Nate will be anywhere but Washington. "You gonna take it?"

Brad shrugs. "I could always wait, go to Quantico in two years from here."

Dean rolls his eyes. "You'd be half as far away from Nate."

Brad nods, because he knew that, but he still looks uncertain. "I like it here. It's close to home. And I missed it, when I was in England."

Dean weighs that. This is as much of a home as he's ever had, and it's not much of one. Home is wherever Sam is, or now, wherever Rebecca is. Home has never really been a place for him. "You miss Nate more," he finally says. "And are you sure home hasn't somehow moved across the country?"

Brad looks a little surprised at that. "I…"

But Dean knows this one, because he grew up without a permanent spot to think about as home. He's never had a "childhood home," never had a room he thought about when he thought about being a kid. There's a few places he lived for a year, a few more he lived for six months, but he's never had a place he lived at for more than that. He never started school in the place he ended it.

"Nate's home for you now, dude," Dean tells him.

Brad eyes him. "Is Rebecca home for you?"

Dean shrugs. "Sam and Rebecca. Home has always been a person for me," he tells him. Brad knows the surface of Dean's childhood, knows he joined up on his 18th birthday from the middle of nowhere so he could send his brother to college. He knows about hunting demons and ghosts and that it's the family business, but Dean doesn't really talk about what that meant as far as schooling and lack of stability meant.

Brad doesn't say anything to that. He doesn't talk about it again, but a couple of weeks later Dean gets a phone call about 'the most kick ass going away party since the LT's paddle party' from Ray.

It turns into more of a reunion party for Bravo 2, and Nate shows up, much to the delight of the guys who don't talk to him on a regular basis.

In October of 2005, Dean gets a phone call from his dad for the first time in 8 years. He can't understand it. He gets emergency leave and drives up to Palo Alto to see Sammy, and the two of them spend most of a night running it through filters to see what they can get off it.

It still doesn't make sense.

The next day, Dean gets a phone call from Sam. It's the anniversary of the day their mom died, and it's the day they find out more than they really want to about how it happened.

Dean has vague memories of their mother, of long blonde hair and the smell of lilacs.

He also has vague memories of his dad, drunk, mumbling about their mom being stuck to the ceiling of Sam's room. These nights stopped happening once their dad figure out what had really happened, but he'd never told Dean or Sam what this information he'd found out was.

The night after their Dad calls Dean, Sam walks into the apartment to find a demon trapped in one of the Devil's Traps, spitting mad, but unable to break their seal. Dean had gone all out on Sam's apartment, gone for a full seal of Solomon, and the work seems to have paid off.

Jess had been in the shower when Sam got there, and she tells him, fear in her eyes, that the demon hadn't been there when she'd gotten in. Dean and Sam spend over an hour finding the right exorcism to get the persistent bastard gone. Dean's only done the one exorcism since he joined the Marines, two years before in the middle of the Iraqi desert, but this demon isn't like any of the other's he's come across. He's stronger and harder to control, and Sam ends up finally trying something in Hebrew that Dean has never heard before. Finally, the demon, Azazel, is gone, leaving the body of a man neither Dean or Sam have ever seen before in Sam's doorway.

There aren't any obvious wounds on the body. Dean's never seen a demon host that wasn't mangled, but this one looks like the guy is just sleeping. They shift the body into the hallway when no one is around, leaning his over like he just stopped and sat down, and then Sam and Dean pull out a couple of beers. When they hear one of Sam's neighbors scream, they open the door and act like they have no idea what's going on.

It's a long shot, that the police won't find the death a homicide, but something is on their side because the ME rules that the guy had a heart attack. Given what they know of being possessed by a demon, Sam tells Dean, he can't imagine that doesn't happen to most hosts.

Dean drops a letter with the information they have on the demon, what he wanted, and that they sent him back to hell, into the mail to a drop box of their dad's in Colorado. Dean doesn't get a reply, and he doesn't get any more phone calls from his dad.

He knows Sam gets a birthday card from their dad sometimes. One came in July two years ago, and had spent an entire phone call bitching about it to Dean when he was in Iraq.

Dean doesn't know what to tell Sam about their dad. Dean knows the man loved them, but he knows that he was obsessed with the chase of whatever killed their mother, is obsessed with being a hunter. Dean isn't sure their dad ever knew how to be a father.

Dean knows, if you have to put labels on it, that he basically raised Sammy. He still has no idea how to comfort his brother about their Dad, because he's not sure if, in the long run, he is over the way their dad raised them himself.

Dean gets shipped out to Afghanistan in December. He spends the next 9 months slogging through a hostile territory masquerading as tribal lands that are friendly. He helps build schools and runs black ops in to Pakistan and trains cops to police their own people, all the while afraid that these men he's training will turn their training on him and the men he's serving with.

All he wants to do, when he gets back to Oceanside, is hug Rebecca and Sam and then go to sleep.

Instead, he doesn't even get off the base. An FBI agent in a suit is waiting for him, and the MPs put Dean in an interrogation room with a look of pity that tells Dean all he needs to know about the man's personality. Dean has no idea what the man wants. He hasn't done anything illegal since he turned 18, and nothing he'd done before then was something that would catch the FBI's eye.

Turns out the asshole in the suit wants to talk about his dad.

"You and your dad still close, Dean?" the agent opens with.

Dean snorts. "I haven't talked to him since the day I turned 18."

"He called you, a year ago," the agent tells him, flipping through a file.

Dean shrugs. "Not that I got." He feels like it's not a lie, because without a goldwave filter and a lot of luck, you'd have never known it was his dad.

The number from a phone booth in the middle of nowhere California is not conclusive evidence of his father calling him.

The agent asks him all sort of things about his father, about growing up with him. Dean gives the man exactly an hour. At that point, he sighs, shifts in his seat, and cuts the man off midsentence. "I want my phone call."

Agent Henriksen looks disgruntled at that. Dean figures he wasn't expecting him to ask for his phone call at an hour, but Dean doesn't really have anything to say to the man, and he's pretty done hearing all of his dad's exploits.

Dean calls Sam. Sam says he's already there. He walks in twenty minutes after the phone call and levels a look at the agent that Dean knows from experience lets you know exactly how much you fucked up.

"What, exactly, are you holding my brother for?" Sam asks, and his voice is icy.

It's fun to watch Sam take the agent apart. Dean's tired, so he stops truly paying attention to them.

Dean is pretty impressed how fast Sam gets the agent to back off. It's pretty obvious to Dean that the guy was only fishing, anyway. Both he and Sam have clearly cut themselves off from their father, and it would be obvious to anyone with half a brain to see it.

When they get outside and into the parking lot, Sam stops Dean and wraps him up in a hug. Dean is still constantly amazed by how tall Sammy had gotten. Dean is still bulkier due to marine life, but Sam isn't out of shape by any means. Dean is always grateful he hasn't stopped training.

When they get to the car, Dean frowns. "Jess and Becky took the beater to your place. I told them we'd follow in the Impala."

Dean lets Sammy get into the driver's side. If he'd had any more sleep in the last 48, he probably wouldn't have. Dean reaches over to mess with the stereo, and Sam bats his hand away.

Dean stares at him incredulously.

"Hey, you made the rules," Sam defends himself with a grin. "Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole."

Dean just throws his head back and laughs.


End file.
